


Northbound

by paperiuni



Series: Ash and Salt [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Drama, Interlude, M/M, Side Story, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 00:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3831022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian is lying, and the truth is only ever a matter of methods.</p><p>(A brief companion piece to <i>House of Ash and Salt</i>, told from Bull's point of view.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Northbound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [radiophile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiophile/gifts).



> Written as an answer to a writing meme prompt by the inestimable radiophile on tumblr. The prompt was "POV--something that’s already happened, retold from another character’s perspective", so here you go, a Bull's eye view of _House of Ash and Salt_.
> 
> Speaking of the main story--I'm working on the next chapter. April _slammed_ me with RL but I can sort of see the end now. I thank you kindly for your patience, and for all the warm words, comments and messages. They absolutely keep me going.

Dorian is lying.

Not by what he does--the demanding kiss, the pointed grip of his hands, the want are all honest--but by what he omits. Bull doesn't need Ben-Hassrath training for that. He knows Dorian. He doesn't know just _what_ brings Dorian to his door that night, but it clings to him like a burial shroud.

For that knowledge, that slow-built familiarity, that intimacy that no longer requires thought, Bull goes with it. Lets Dorian crowd him and kiss him and divert him. Binds him and holds him and tries to draw away the quiet, haunting thing that lives between his ragged breaths.

Given time, Dorian almost always talks. He'll let his bluster fall and gather his courage in the end.

In the morning, Dorian slides out of bed way too early. Bull lets him go. Dorian presses a dry, lingering kiss on his brow at the line of the absent eyepatch and winds words into it, _Sleep_ and _Don't mind me_ and then something softer and in Tevene.

That should've been a cue. Maybe he's getting rusty. Not many espionage reports to send these days. Most of the Chargers' work consists of straight-up scrapping with whatever the Inquisition needs crushed into a fine paste that week.

That noon it turns out to be some bandits, made lean and desperate by midwinter. Cullen could pass the job to his troops. Bull agrees to take it before the commander finishes speaking. He pretends not to see the little bounce in Skinner's step as she leaps to gather her blades and leathers, but ribs Krem mercilessly for his heartfelt, "About time, these chuckleheads are an hour away from a mutiny."

They track the robbers to a cluster of caves some way north of the Skyhold pass. Once their leader's blood reddens the snow, the rest take the prospect of Inquisition justice and relatively warm, mostly dry dungeon cells with almost disheartening docility. Poor bastards.

The fourth day sees them back in Skyhold, heaped with the gratitude of the village the bandits had been haranguing, and in lighter spirits for the whole outing. Bull scans the scattered welcome committee--Sera, eager for re-enactments of bandit conquest, Blackwall, curious about the restored security of the road, Josephine, her hood up against the nippy wind, beckoning Bull with a gesture as soon as she catches his eye.

He finds himself angling for the windows of the round tower. Not that you'd even see someone standing in them in this light, with the sun pale and harsh upon the snow. There's the library floor. There, Dorian's nook, the deep chair, the piled books, the lute half-hidden behind the chair. Must be some fascinating reading if he's missed the entire commotion in the bailey.

"I am sorry," Josephine is saying. "It didn't seem right to stop him."

"Uh. Say that again?" Something lurches under Bull's ribs like he's stepped over a stair.

She looks up at him with a soft, steady air. "Serah Pavus left for Tevinter three days ago. On a family matter."

She chose well in coming to tell him herself. The stagger becomes a plummet. He fills his chest with breath, lets it trickle out, and the chill from it soaks on through his stiffened frame.

"He was quite reticent about it," she goes on. _You don't fucking say_ , Bull thinks. "If it would help, I can tell you what I know. In a more private setting, perhaps."

Bull's exhalation billows into the frigid air, silvered by the sun. "I'll be by. After I see to my men. They're a bit more excitable than usual."

The smile she'd allow herself at that fades before it forms. "At your convenience. I'll be in my study."

Bull sees to his men. He takes Stitches's report about the injured and Krem's notes on the family of the archer they lost. He shoos Dalish and the matter of her broken staff blade to the quartermaster. Something dark must seep into his parting glance, because she makes no quips about bows being unsuited for blade attachments and slinks away at speed.

Josephine can't give him much more than what she told him in the bailey. Dorian has taken a good horse and a letter of credit penned by her and gone north. With luck–- _luck_ , indeed--he'll have reached Lake Calenhad and the highway by now.

 _A family matter_.

Dorian came to him with _that_ caught in his teeth and spoke not a word. The rest of him bespoke pain but withheld the details. The truth comes too late, delayed by chance and Bull's own circumvention.

And the truth is only ever a matter of methods. Bull has broken and dragged, intimidated, bantered and seduced truth out of more people than he ever kept track of. Sometimes it's a destruction as much as a revelation. That was what stayed his questions with Dorian.

Half under his breath, he wonders about the logistics of smuggling a qunari over the Tevinter border. That far up north spring is well on its way, which means the Imperium border guard is stirring from its torpor, too.

"Don't know, chief," Krem says. "You'd have to account for three humans, two elves and a dwarf on top of that."

Bull claps him on the shoulder, a hard, grateful grip, and gets up from the table.

It's the only time they speak of the subject. The days go on.

Lavellan's dragon-hunting expedition in the Emprise du Lion is a resounding success. They sit in the smoky hall of Suledin Keep, the dwindling troupe of the Inquisitor's old circle, and toast their victory with bitter wine mulled to sweetness with copious spices. Sera recreates Cassandra hewing two-handed into the dragon's shoulder. At her insistent glower, Bull provides a proper, barrel-chested dragon roar to accompany the feat.

Then, as she moves on to the deathblow, he goes back to scraping his knife over curved ivory, scouring off the soft tissues, smoothing away wear and tear. He works best as he can by the fluttering firelight. There's a mug of wine beside him--no one could find the goblets, and in the end no one gave a shit--but he only remembers to quaff when someone calls for another toast.

Someone picks up the mug, sets it onto the mantelpiece, and takes its place on the bench. Cole tilts up his hat, one foot drawn up onto the seat. Still all limbs, still hovering on the cusp of boy and man, stuck at seventeen summers.

"The fire of the fight goes to ashes, sodden, spoiled, smothered. You are sad, the Iron Bull."

"I'd prefer _in thought_ , kid." Bull's knife shaves off an imperfection along the tapering tip. "No complaints about the battle."

For the others, kindness means leaving well enough alone. Sera prods, but only to make him grin. Lavellan, contained and careful, sometimes strays into squeezing his forearm and then turns it into a belated shove. Bull is unbudged by her wiry elven arm, but the attempt at comfort is harder to slough off.

As for Cole, he can't help what he is. Bull gets that. Has got used to his strain of weird. He must be _thinking_ harder than he realised if Cole actually scooted over to him.

"We had to fight that fight. Now the people are safe. No more crying and cowering."

"True enough."

"So does he," Cole says. Bull feels the twitch of muscle under his eyes, the whole and the phantom one both. "Not a battle of blood and blades. The pain runs bright along old grooves. Hurt, hushed, haunted, in the house that's a home no more."

The fire glows with meagre warmth. Bull breathes the smell of woodsmoke, the crack of chilly stone walls and the flavours in the wine. Blackwall breaks out in rare laughter, Lavellan joining in with a chuckle nearly swallowed by his merriment.

 _Ground me_ , Bull thinks. _I'm here. This is now_.

What he has--had, whatever the word is now--with Dorian was layered with plenty of rules. None of them girded more than the bed and whatever served as a byword for _bed_ at any given moment. They came and went freely, to and from each other. There was no word for it that they'd speak aloud.

That's not strictly true. Bull offered one--as a retort, as a riddle, the only way Dorian might take it. And Dorian went on his way to Tevinter without asking for anyone's counsel.

"That?" He gestures at Cole with the hilt of his knife. "Still weird."

"I know." Bull can tell Cole a hundred times. He will accept it and live by it until something pushes him so strong that he can't ignore it. It makes at least a dash of sense. Some days Bull, too, really wishes he could tell his mind to shut its yap and go stand in the corner.

" 'S fine." He shrugs. No use getting pissed at the kid.

"He said it softly, so it'd sink, so you'd sleep," Cole says. "But it's still there."

He shouldn't ask. It's been two months. "What's that?"

"The love still lingers," and with that, Cole is off the bench, leather boots silent on the rushes, the last part a mutter, "through the wear and the weeping."

The sharp point pricks a drop of blood from Bull's thumb as he tests it. Of course it does. He'll have to finish his work in better light, but it'll be something to do when they break trail. Most of the dragon parts go to Dagna, Harritt and his smiths, or the tanners and armourers, to be turned into necessary gear.

Bull delivered the blow that split the neck of the beast. He can claim a tooth for his troubles. It'll make a dagger or a bracer, and it'll keep his hands busy.


End file.
